The precise planting of seeds is essential for achieving a field's maximum crop yield potential and profitability. Numerous agricultural planters are known in the art which utilize various types of seed metering devices designed to select and dispense individual seeds at desired intervals.
The most common types of seed meters being employed today are mechanical and vacuum seed meters. Mechanical seed meters typically removably secure the seeds to the meter through finger-like projections. Vacuum meters usually apply a vacuum to one side of a rotating disk containing concentric circular apertures thereby creating a negative pressure on the opposite sides of the disk. Vacuum seed meters are somewhat preferable to mechanical seed meters because they typically include fewer parts. With fewer parts, the farmer does not have as much to maintain and unsuccessful seed release due to a part failure is decreased.
Despite some of the advantages of vacuum seed meters, various reliability issues exist with the current vacuum seed meters. For example, the strong vacuum pressure typically required to sufficiently hold the seed within the aperture of the seed disk can result in the seeds not being timely discharged or smaller seeds or portions becoming lodged in the apertures.
A lack of proper maintenance of the seed meter or a farmer's failure to use the correct seed meter for a particular application contributes to the skipping or multiple dropping of individual seeds. Therefore, it would be advantageous to provide a vacuum seed meter device which requires little maintenance on the part of the farmer yet readily and timely discharges the seeds from the seed metering device.